The Dark Mark
by iluvbooks95
Summary: How to become a Death Eater: The story of how Snape became a Death Eater.
1. Prologue

**This is my very first fan-fiction. I hope you guys like it! Reviews would be awesome! **

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A man with a wrinkled face and long white beard looked upon a tall figure through his spectacles. "So you are willing to go as a spy? It is a great risk," said the old man in his calm, slow voice.

The man nodded firmly. "I know of the risk, Dumbledore. But desperate times call for desperate measures."

"I fear you are right. Speak to Lucius, but do not let anything slip."

With another nod, the man closed the door behind him dramatically. _The adventure has begun._

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**Sorry about the shortness. Usually my chapters are _really_ long. But that's for stories. In this fan-fiction, I'm going to have smaller chapters.  
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	2. Initiation

**Another short chapter. Now you can figure out what's going on.**

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A scrawny young figure supporting a billowing black cloak shivered as the cold swallowed him and he realized what he was doing. He looked around in an attempt to remember the directions Malfoy had given him, but he could hardly see but a few of the grungy houses in the utter darkness. A lone gas lamp stood near one of the alleys, shedding feeble light, vainly hoping to conquer the darkness.

He stepped into the deserted alley, thinking the lamp a sign. He heard a twig break somewhere in the alley, but he continued on his way as there was no point in turning back. And anyways, it was impossible for him to see but a few feet in front. He kept walking into the alley, paranoid and afraid. He came closer to the shuffling noise, and soon the noise was at his feet. He looked down quickly, and to his dismay a rat lay scuffling through garbage. He shivered again. He hated rats.

The directions pooled back to him, and he was happy that he didn't have nose around in this ghost town any longer. He ran silently to the other side of the alley. A large gate blocked the path to a small house, more like a shack. The topmost hinge was broken, and the gate was tilted precariously, like a warning of some kind. He whispered a few words in a commanding, yet fearful voice and the gate creaked open reluctantly.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside and the gate closed behind him. He began taking slow steps towards the door, thinking about what he was going to do. _Am I doing the right thing? _he thought. Before he could knock on the door, it was suddenly yanked open. The man took a step backwards as a hooded, shadowy hunch-backed figure appeared at the door.

"Come in," said a raucous voice.

As the man stepped disgustedly into the dull, creepy shack, he felt goosebumps run down the lengths of his covered arms as a viciously cold gust of wind seeped out of the room he was to enter. He shivered, but not from the cold.

The hooded man opened the door and signaled for him to enter. He took an unwilling step into the room. The man who had brought him here bowed before a small, huddled hooded figure sitting in a crudely-made chair, and he knew he had to do the same. There were no windows in the room, but he knew where the breeze had come from.

"Is he the one?" asked the hunch-backed man, his voice fearful and squeaky now.

The hood suddenly fell off the newly-entered man's head as the creature whispered some words, and his jet black hair was exposed. "Ah, Goyle, you have done well," replied the figure in a scratchy voice that made him shiver. It lifted its head and he could see glowing, red slits and a smirk of sharp, yellow teeth.

The creature turned to face the man after Goyle slipped out of the room. "And what is it you please, Severus?" he asked menacingly.

"I-I have come to j-join you, M-Master," stuttered Severus.

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**Dun dun dun dunnnnn...pretty pathetic cliff hanger though. Oh well.**


	3. The Trials

**A longer chapter. Let's figure out what happens! Send me some reviews please! I'm dying to find out what you think of my writing...even if it is my very first day submitting the story...Hah.**

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The huddled figure suddenly stood up from his chair, and Severus tried hard not to flinch as it drew up to him and began circling, hovering inches over the ground.

"Will you serve me and no one else? Will you die for me if I ask you to? Will you be loyal and obey me to your final breath?"

"Y-yes, Master."

"Then slit your throat now and die."

Severus' face went pale, turning whiter than it already was in fright. The huddled figure threw back its head and laughed, a guttural sound that sent chills through his body and made the air around them icy. "Kids these days," it hissed. "Can't take a well-deserve joke."

Severus, seeing that he was safe, for the moment at least, let the color return to his face. But his terror still remained.

"You will have to face the Trials if you want to join the Death Eaters, though," it said, slits narrowing until they were no more than pulsing red lines.

Severus furrowed his eyebrows. _The Trials? _he thought in confusion._ Malfoy didn't tell me anything about that._

"Malfoy was instructed not to tell you anything about them," replied Voldemort, reading his mind eerily.

Severus widened his eyes. If Voldemort could read his mind, did he know about Dumbledore and why he was here? Surely he would have been killed already, though.

He looked up to see Voldemort studying him with intent eyes, and it took all of Severus' willpower to keep from turning around and fleeing. He knew what Voldemort was doing; Malfoy _had_ told him about this. He was probing into Severus' mind for his weaknesses, and Severus shivered at the thought of what Voldemort would do with the information.

Then Voldemort closed his eyes and began chanting something that Severus had never heard before. After seven long minutes, Voldemort opened his eyes and yelled, _"Anglat!"_

Suddenly the floor beneath Severus' feet was sucked away, and with a roar he found himself sucked into the darkness and falling.

Falling.

Falling.

And falling.

His yells echoed on walls that seemed miles away, and his arms flailed around, trying to find something to hold on to. He couldn't figure out which way was up and down now, but in one direction he saw a dot of light that was growing bigger and bigger as he fell towards it. _Light_, he thought happily.

Suddenly he smacked hard against the cold, concrete floor. With a groan, he pushed himself upright and sat down with a grimace. The hole that was once in the ceiling sealed itself up until you couldn't even tell something was once even there. The light that he thought he saw wasn't there anymore, and he found himself in pitch darkness.

"_Lumos!"_ he yelled drawing out his wand. Finally he took a glimpse at his surroundings. Surrounding him on all sides, were hundreds of large, brown _rats_. With a whimper of revulsion, he began pushing himself the opposite way with his hands and crashed into something that quickly fell. He flipped around and a skull rolled towards him, the rest of its body a few feet away. After squinting his eyes, he saw a whole horde of skeletons lying against the wall, covered from head to toe in rats. _The ones that failed the Trials… _With a yelp, he stood up and backed away, the pain in his back forgotten as a rat launched itself at his knee.

_What the hell_, he thought to himself with disgust. _I'm a _wizard_!_

"_Impervius!" _he yelled as another threw itself at him. The rat bounced off his invisible wall and twitched on the floor before going still.

He pointed his wand at a clump of rats that were staring at him with displeasure. _"Reducto!" _The rats widened their eyes and froze.

_This is way too easy…_

Now filled with suspicion, he looked around to figure out the point of being locked in this dungeon of despair. Suddenly, the rats around him began to disappear one by one, until the huge walled room he was in was empty. He shivered. Confused, Severus turned his head this way this way and that, searching for a trap or something else.

Then something dropped down from the ceiling. _A basilisk! _Grateful that the creature was looking away, he turned around and searched desperately for something to use. But there was nothing there. Then he spotted a small wide shard of glass and picked it up. He punched it so it cracked in half, and then turned one at an angle to look at the basilisk. It must have felt something, as it began to whip around. Severus launched both of the shards of glass backwards and the basilisk shrieked in pain. They had hit their mark: the basilisk's eyes.

Something soft began rolling his way and stopped somewhere in front of him. He made a face in disgust as he realized it was a basilisk's eye, a trail of blood following it, the glass shard embedded into the top where it had poked it out. Closing his eyes, he picked it up and secured it in a pocket inside his robe after pulling the glass piece out, for what he had no reason. He quickly wiped his hands on his robes and looked at the basilisk with his glass piece after cleaning it of blood. He quickly shut his eyes as he realized only one of the glass shards had hit the mark; the other had dug itself into its nose. He placed the shard of glass into the same pocked for further use and studied the wall intently again. A large piece of it was loose, and it was fashioned into the shape of a long dagger.

Before he could run towards it, the basilisk struck. It lashed its head out towards Snape, mouth wide open. He ducked to the side, and one of the fangs grazed his shoulder, leaving a long squiggly cut: a snake. The tip of its fang was broken off and buried in his skin. He quickly yanked it out, not wanting the poison to insert itself into his body. The basilisk began to circle him, and he leaped over the first coil and ran towards the wall with the loose dagger shaped metal. He put one foot against the wall and tugged with all his might, his hurt shoulder sending sears of pain through his body. The basilisk collided into his back with his nose, pushing him against the wall and embedding the slice of glass into his own back. He clutched it with his fist and pulled it out with a groan of pain.

When the basilisk launched itself at him again, he slashed the other eye with the glass, his eyes closed as he waved the shard frantically around, trying to get the eye. When he felt a drop of blood drip down his face, he opened his right eye a tiny bit, and to his relief he saw that the eye had been slashed, the shard hooked into its eye. While the basilisk roared in pity for itself, he yanked the dagger clean out of the wall and sliced at the basilisk's neck with all his strength. He pumped his fist childishly as the head rolled off to the side and the basilisk disappeared all together.

"You're doing well in the very beginning," said a rasping voice that echoed all around him. He flashed his head everywhere, but it seemed like the voice was coming from everywhere and no where at the same time. "Keep going." It faded out, and suddenly he discovered a door that he hadn't seen there before.

With a yell of delight, he stumbled along the bloodstained floor and opened the door with a grunt. And the trials continued.

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**Oooooo...I wonder what Snape has to face next...I'm trying to figure it out myself. This is, like all my other pieces of writing, something that I write as I go. No outline whatsoever. Unless I kinda have an idea spark.**


	4. Illusions

**THE NEXT CHAPTER IS UP!**

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Just as Severus entered, he was blinded by a vicious white light that closed in on him. The light dimmed a bit, yet Severus was still forced to narrow his eyes immensely. He saw spots of red, blue and purple everywhere, as if someone had just taken a picture of him. It took him a few moments to accustom to the bright light, as if he had just woken up and the sun was beaming down at him.

Finally his eyes adjusted to the light, and he found himself in a corridor, the walls, floors and ceiling all covered in tube lights. Squinting to see what was at the far end, he was pleased to notice a door that wasn't supported by the lights that burned all around him. He began casually walking towards it, but the door just kept moving farther and farther away. Wrinkling his eyebrows, Severus began running, and yet the door was still the same distance away, like he was on a treadmill.

Severus looked down to make sure he really wasn't on a treadmill, and he closed his eyes again, as all he saw were the blaring lights. Suddenly he remembered those things he used to glare at in muggle kids magazines. (He blushed as he remembered.) _Illusions_, he thought with a smug grin.

But Severus was never really good at illusions. Even after following explicit directions, he didn't see anything in them. _Voldemort chose well here_, he thought acrimoniously. And it might have just been him and his monotonous imagination, but he thought he heard a hoarse chuckle.

_Maybe if I close my eyes and pretend there was never any illusion, it'll go away_, he thought, thinking back to movies and books he had read before.

Severus closed his eyes tightly, and with a smile found himself back in Hogwarts, disciplining Potter and Weasley by making them scrub the dungeon floors with pesky pixies picking away at their ears. _There's no illusion_, he made himself believe. Clinging to this belief, he slowly opened his eyes, thinking he'd be sitting in his office planning the next day's harsh lesson. But he was wrong. Not only was he not at Hogwarts, the blinding lights pierced his eyes again.

Severus thought about willing the door to come to him, not vice versa. He took a deliberately slow step backwards, watching the door intently for any sign of it moving towards him. Still, it felt like the treadmill was going backwards as well. The door remained where it always was; always out of reach.

With a huff of renounce he sat down on the floor, wincing as he imagined the heat that would probably burrow through his body. But the floor was cold. _That's strange…_He then saw a pair of sunglasses lying next to him that he probably hadn't noticed before through the intense light. Closing his eyes so they were no more than slits, he reached for the sunglasses and propped them onto his face. If anyone saw him like this…

He then looked down at the floor for the first time without flinching. It was still hard to make out what was beneath all the lights, but underneath it all he could see a…carpet? Suddenly, an idea sparked to him. He removed the piece of glass from inside his pocket, then dug it into the floor. The floor began cracking, as did the walls and ceiling. In slow motion, the glass shattered all around him, the light glinting off all the individual specks of glass, a rainbow of colors surrounding him from all around him. Before they could rain down on him, they disappeared and Severus found himself in the same corridor, except it wasn't filled with illumination.

The walls were made of polished wooden planks, and the floor was a dense maroon carpet slithering away. He looked to the other side and spotted the recognizable door. He inhaled slowly, then took a step forward….and was a step closer to the door. He smiled and broke off into a sprint, almost colliding into the door as he reached it. There was no door handle that he could see and for a second he thought he was trapped. And then it hit him. Flushing a bit at his stupidity, he pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness, immediately freezing as a familiar cold swept over him.

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**Yeah, don't tell me. This was my worst chapter...**


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